It depends on what you think the purpose of these laws is. If you think they're supposed to be deterrents, then you're absolutely right. It's not a deterrent fo

It depends on what you think the purpose of these laws is. If you think they're supposed to be deterrents, then you're absolutely right. It's not a deterrent for rich people. The other point of view is that by speeding, you are doing a certain amount of damage to society. Speeding does kill people, so you can spread the cost to society across all speeders. Government agencies regularly put values on human lives (usually around $10 million right now), so it becomes a simple number of people killed * $10 million / number of speeders / rate of speeders being caught. This damage being done, however, is the same no matter how much money you make. There's a long tradition of seeing the punishment for a crime as making society whole after you've done damage to it (hence the phrase "paying your debt to society" being used to refer to a prison sentence).